The encounter was excruciatingly painful. “She said that she declined several times.”Īccording to Nevils, she “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it,’” Farrow writes. He then pushed her onto the bed, “flipping her over, asking if she liked anal sex,” Farrow writes. Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleges, Lauer - who was wearing a T-shirt and boxers - pushed her against the door and kissed her. Nevils, Farrow writes, “had no reason to suspect Lauer would be anything but friendly based on prior experience.” At the end of the night, Nevils, who’d had six shots of vodka, ended up going to Lauer’s hotel room twice - once to retrieve her press credential, which Lauer had taken as a joke, and the second time because he invited her back.

In Nevils’ account, one night over drinks with Vieira at the hotel bar where the NBC News team was staying, they ran into Lauer, who joined them. In Sochi, Nevils was tasked with working with former “Today” co-anchor Meredith Vieira, who’d been brought back to the show to do Olympics coverage. “It is categorically false, ignores the facts, and defies common sense.” “In a new book, it is alleged that an extramarital, but consensual, sexual encounter I have previously admitted having, was in fact an assault,” Lauer says. In an open letter provided to Variety by his lawyer, Lauer denies any wrongdoing.

Our hearts break again for our colleague.” “That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. “Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time,” NBC News said in a statement.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow